Birmingham's St. Elias food festival celebrates church's centennial

Zmorrod Garnem prepares bunches of parsley for salads during last year's Lebanese Food and Cultural Festival at St. Elias Maronite Catholic Church. This year's festival is April 9-10. (News File/Joe Songer)This year, St. Elias Maronite Catholic Church is celebrating its 100th year in Birmingham, and for church members as well as guests, the best way to sample the spirit and community of St. Elias is the annual Lebanese Food and Cultural Festival next weekend.

Now in its 12th year, the festival was founded in 1999 by brothers Paul Bolus, an attorney for Bradley Arant Boult Cummings and Norman Bolus, who teaches nuclear medicine technology at UAB.

As co-chairmen, the Bolus brothers oversee an army of about 300 church volunteers, who, this year, will prepare 12,000 grape leaves, 6,000 spinach pies, 1,500 meat pies and 2,000 chicken halves.

Nobody, in other words, should leave hungry.

"I've been to Lebanon, and the food is so ingrained in the culture," Paul Bolus says. "Our people are always wanting to make sure we put enough food on the plates and that everybody is happy."

Desserts include baklawa, kaak, zlaybah and Lebanese ice cream, all of which are $2 each. A sampler is available for $12.

All orders are available to eat in or carry out.

Also, during lunch on Friday, delivery is available to Southside and downtown on orders of $75 or more. To place a delivery order, call 252-3867 or go to www.stelias.org between Monday and Thursday.

In addition to the food, the festival features traditional dancing by the children of St. Elias and performances by the Amin Sultan Lebanese Band of New York.

Guided tours of the church, including the recently renovated interior, will begin on the church steps every hour from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. To commemorate St. Elias' centennial, 100-year T-shirts, caps and cups also will be on sale.

Each year, the festival donates 25 percent of its profits to charities unrelated to the church, giving more than $195,000 over the past 11 years to such groups as Big Brothers Big Sisters, Camp Smile-A-Mile and the Birmingham YMCA Strong Kids Campaign.

"We've tried to do a mixture of both national and local (charities)," Bolus says. "And certainly we do a lot of local because the local community supports us, so we try to give back."

About 7,500 people attended last year's festival, and to accommodate everybody, organizers have added a second outdoor tent and a second shuttle bus this year.

Festival hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 9 and 10, and admission is free.

Shuttle parking is available from 5 to 9 p.m. both days from the UAB parking lot on 10th Avenue South next to the Epic School lot.